Shadows of the Past
by sunny-historian
Summary: Snape shivered. Twenty years ago... WARNING. Rated M for slash, noncon and language. Repeat: this is slash. Don't like, don't read.


**Shadows of the Past**

For Catherine xxx

**Title: **Shadows of the Past

**Rating: **R

**Warnings:** angst, slash, underage (16) non-con; and I don't **do** plot.

**Timeline:** some fifth-year, mostly Marauders-era

**Spoilers:** don't think there's anything after POA, really

**Disclaimer:** JKR, JKR, JKR (though I wish she'd take better care of them…)

**One-shot; finished 07/07/06**

"Twenty points from Gryffindor," and Snape swept on to Lavender and Parvati with a swish of his robe. Harry banged his fist on the desk, just enough control to bring it down almost soundlessly at the last moment. The last thing he wanted was for Snape to turn round again.

"What did I do? Seriously, Ron, what is _wrong_ with the bloody potion?"

Ron shrugged. "No idea, mate," he said. "But the way he looked at you just then – it was like he wanted to rip you to shreds."

Harry shivered. Snape had been getting more and more short-tempered recently, and his failures at Occlumency hadn't helped anything. Ron was right, though, the hatred on Snape's face was more obvious now than it ever had been. What with Snape and Umbridge, he felt entitled to be paranoid.

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Severus Snape shivered. The Potter boy looked more like James every day, and with the news from outside growing worse and the Umbridge woman causing trouble, it was harder and harder to keep hold on himself. Twenty years ago – twenty years ago almost to the day…

His face twisted, and an onlooker would have found it hard to say whether with contempt or with something else. He got up from his desk and stumbled to the fireplace, taking out his wand and stroking the panelling gently. "Aperi!" and the wooden panelling unwound itself from around a knothole, swiftly enlarging the space and sliding out of sight until the gap was big enough for Snape's hand. He touched the edge and gingerly slipped his fingers inside, taking out a square glass box. Unscrewing the tiny lid, his lips were pressed firmly together, yet when he put it on the mantel and smelt the scent rising from the tiny chest, his face relaxed.

Whispering in Latin, Snape sank gracefully to his knees in front of the fire, black robes pooling about him. He tossed the contents of the casket into the smouldering coals, white powder turning the flames green, and a subtle scent of asphodel filled the dank room. Snape closed his eyes, gasping and clutching at the air and felt himself falling into the fire.

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He opened his eyes in the Potions classroom, standing half-hidden behind one of the cabinets in the top corner by his own desk, as two boys came in.

"For the last time, Snivellus," yelled the shorter of the pair, "will you be quiet! Just cause we've got to do this filthy detention doesn't mean we have to talk about it!"

"As you wish," said the other coldly; and, in his corner, Snape drew his robes tighter about himself, "I merely thought it might be pleasanter if we did not have to spend three hours in this childish baiting."

"Personally, I'm spending them in silence!"

They remained in silence, as the boy with glasses had demanded, for a few minutes, preparing a cauldron and the ingredients for a Draught of Living Death. As he watched, Snape winced, wondering why he had broken the promise he had made to himself, and given in to this shameful, painful weakness at last. He had little time to think, though, since his younger self straightened up and took a breath.

"Potter," he said, "why has this silly enmity continued so long?"

Potter glanced at him briefly. "Because you're a slimy, treacherous git, Snivellus," he said dismissively, "and us lot don't hang around with gits."

"You hang around with Pettigrew!" said the other, lashing out quickly, though Snape the onlooker could see the pain he remembered. Potter and Black had always had the talent of cutting deeply and feeling little themselves. In every area.

"Peter is our friend," Potter replied coldly, and turned back to the asphodel he was throwing into the cauldron in great handfuls. Severus dropped his knife and rounded the bench, gripping Potter's shoulders.

"You hang around with a damned werewolf," he said through gritted teeth, the only time that he had actually had to bite his lip to keep to the level of barely-civil conversation. Potter scrabbled for his wand, but Severus was holding him too far from it. In trying to grasp the wand, though, Potter had been able to draw back far enough to punch his captor's jaw, with such force that he sent Severus sprawling on the dungeon's damp floor. He was still clutching the other's shoulders, and the two boys fell together, Severus gasping in pain from his purpling jaw and clinging with determination, Potter angry and growing more so from the death-grip on his shoulders and the fingernails marking him.

Potter was on top, and gripped Severus in return. His teeth too were gritted. "Take that back, you greasy bastard! Take it back or I break your neck!"

Severus fought and rolled over, pinioning Potter beneath him. His eyes were dark and his breath came hard, but his voice was icy calm. "Why?"

Beneath the chill and the anger there was another tone; and Potter's face paled as he became aware of what was pressing into his thigh. Severus smiled wolfishly. "Why should I take it back?" he repeated, "I could almost say checkmate."

Potter fought, but Severus was stronger. Giving in to the impulses he had denied himself for so long, he kept the smaller boy trapped. He raised his hands carefully from the ground, shifting his weight to his knees, and traced James Potter's narrow mouth. A cruel mouth, like his own. But one that hid its nature better, corners tucked back to give nothing away.

Severus drew in a shuddering breath, and let his fingers ghost across, over Potter's cheeks and up to his eyes. Potter swallowed convulsively. Severus ignored it, though the darkest corners of his being rejoiced maliciously to cause his beautiful enemy fear. With a flick of both hands, Severus tore the glasses from Potter's face, sending them skittering into a corner. Potter struggled harder, then went limp. Only his open, fearful eyes showed that the boy hadn't passed out.

The brutality and spite were coursing through Severus's veins as he had never let them before. When he had laid hands on James Potter, he had let go of every bit of self-control which usually pinned him, fighting it just as James had been fighting the moment before, to civilised humanity. Now he was raw, brutal lust; now he scraped his fingernails over James' arms, pinching the soft white skin, feeling the intoxicating thrill of the power and the other's pain.

In the corner, the older Snape bowed his head. He was shaking from bitterness and anger; angry with himself for the nature he couldn't help, and angry with his sixteen-year-old self for such a vile, evil display of his nature.

At a cry from his victim, Professor Snape looked up in horror, tears coursing down his face. His boy-self was still above James, eyes feral and hands greedy; almost gently he had drawn his fingernails down James' face, hard enough this time to break the clear, pale skin. Leaning down, he tasted the blood which welled from the cuts and then dipped his head further to caress James' lips with his tongue. Not until this did James flinch and draw back, producing the piteous wail which Snape had heard from his corner; even Padfoot would have been proud of Prongs' stoicism until that point. Severus too seemed affected by the response. He stumbled backwards from where Potter lay and caught the bench for support.

"Merlin, I –"

Potter too stumbled to his feet. When Severus didn't seem about to make any move, he half-ran to the place where he had been working and snatched up his wand. "Reducto!" he cursed, his voice breaking halfway through, but his aim was off and Severus escaped the full force of the Blasting Curse. With the hair on the left-hand side of his face singed, he pulled himself to his feet, getting hold of his own wand.

"Petrificus Totalus!" he cast, and with the Latin incantation and James' fall, stiff and staring, to the floor, the rage which had left him swept back. It was a different rage this time, not the hot lust; now he was cold again, knowing what he was doing, but caring nothing about anything but Potter's cruel mind that had tormented his waking hours for six years, and his crueller body that had tormented him in dreams for three.

"Imperio!"

Raising his wand higher, James was raised from the floor, still Petrified. Severus cast the counter-curse, carelessly, so that the other hung limply.

"Now, Potter," he said conversationally, "or shall I call you James? You're going to come over here."

Obediently, Potter moved towards him. Severus extended his arms around the boy and bent his head to kiss him roughly. Snape, in the corner, remembered the disappointment of that kiss. With Potter subdued and compliant, not struggling, the encounter had lacked the spice that it had had before. Now, having lived through the war and on the point of entering a second, Snape understood himself. Then, though, young for sixteen in some ways and inexperienced, he hadn't quite understood. This had been the first and only time he had indulged his desires.

He saw himself drop to his knees in front of Potter. "Take your gown off," he ordered, and Potter obeyed. Underneath, he wore tight Muggle jeans and a tee-shirt; Muggle clothes were a fashion among the sixth-years, especially the Marauders, arbiters of cool for almost all their fellows. Severus scorned such fashions, and groped at the fastening of the jeans with difficulty. Finally he managed to undo the buttons and drag the garment down Potter's narrow hips, leaving red scratch-marks down his thighs from the metal studs. Potter didn't seem to bother with underwear; there were no more barriers to Severus' leaning forward and touching. The rage ebbed away, replaced by wonder; his touch was almost caressing. He leant further and closed his mouth on James, using lips and teeth and tongue –

And Potter broke the curse. As soon as Severus lifted his mouth for a second, he was kicked in the belly.

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Falling onto the floor of his study, Snape wept as he hadn't wept for years. The memory flooded his mind, horrifying in its vividness. And there were the other memories: of lying in a desperate huddle on the floor of the Potions classroom, curled around the pain, crying, as Potter kicked him consistently, summoned a Bludger to punish him further, and left; of Potter's undisguised hatred in the halls for the next year and a half, and his cold civility at graduation; of the Dark Mark singeing his flesh, and the determination to wipe out Potter and his kind. Of news of the man's death at last, an enemy whom he had loved, hated and punished; and the attendant celebrations. When he had excused himself from the Order's joyful supper, gone to his lonely flat and stared into space for days and nights on end. He should have felt triumph. Of the four who had plagued him at school, only one had survived, and he broken; the Dark Lord whom he had served and turned from was gone; and yet all he could see was the smile on James Potter's face as he plotted with his lieutenants, the smile that had made him look away for fear his yearning was evident, the smile that his secret hopes had made James smile for him. This was the agony that had driven him, half-dizzy with the war and his heartbreak, to create that potion. Not trusting the charms of the Pensieve, he had distilled his memories with asphodel and powdered the result, locked it away and vowed never to touch the past.

Yet after so many years, he had broken his vow, he had freed the past and chained himself again. He had needed to see the demon he had been, and whom he had loved and hated. James Potter. Not Harry Potter. The child was not responsible for his father's cruelty.

And yet the child was so like James Potter. The Evans girl's eyes, but the Potter boy's face and hair and voice and body. And the Potter boy's charisma and casual disregard for the people he hurt.

Snape shivered and wept.


End file.
